Returning Fire : HBO’s ‘The James Brady Story’ Hopes to Prove Potent Ammunition in the Battle Over Gun Control

It is the same sort of afternoon--rainy and cold, with the wind blowing down the narrow corridor of T Street. A man with a striking resemblance to former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady strolls out from the side entrance of the Washington Hilton. Suddenly, six shots are fired. The crowd gasps. The entourage scatters. Brady’s look-alike collapses, face down, on the glistening gray sidewalk.

“Cut! Places again, everyone,” a woman’s voice blasts over a megaphone.

The infamous day of March 30, 1981--when John Hinckley Jr., wielding a $29 revolver, shot President Ronald Reagan, his press secretary, a Secret Service agent and a policeman--was being re-created for a Home Box Office TV movie called “The James Brady Story.”

Beau Bridges, who plays Brady, repeatedly crumpled into the foam cushioning of blue stunt mats during filming at the hotel recently. He brushed himself off after each rehearsal and walked away.

But inside the hotel at a press conference the day before, the real James Brady sat in his wheelchair, walking only with the help of an ever-present wood cane.

At the press conference, Brady and his wife, Sarah, charged that the gun-control legislation that bears his name was “held hostage” and kept from a vote in the House last September--one of many setbacks they’ve encountered. Two years ago, their bill was soundly defeated in the House.

Now they hope the HBO movie may be able to do what they, their speeches and the annual $6-million budget of the gun-control lobby have not been able to do: Pass the Brady bill. The legislation would require a handgun purchaser to wait seven days before being allowed to take possession of the weapon. The extra time would allow police to check whether the buyer had a criminal record and also would serve as a cooling-off period for the hot-headed, impulsive buyer with a score to settle.

“I sure will be happy to have the public awareness up again,” Sarah Brady said of the film. “It is not a political discourse, or meant to be, but it does point out what a quick second with a handgun can do to a family.”

Later, she added, “We’re looking forward to bringing up the Brady bill in the House early next year.” The film is due to premiere on the pay-cable channel in May.

“The James Brady Story” is a $5-million, 90-minute movie about the couple’s nine-year struggle after a bullet intended for Reagan, called a Devastator, entered Brady’s head through his left temple and exploded. Pieces lodged in his brain, robbing him of his speech, his short-term memory and the movement of most of the left side of his body.

From his perspective, executive producer David Puttnam said that the film is primarily a triumph-over-adversity story. To write it he chose his friend, Robert Bolt, who himself had struggled back from the debilitating effects of a stroke. The movie is based on Mollie Dickinson’s 1987 book about Brady called “Thumbs Up.”

Even so, “it would be marvelous if this film would put . . . change in motion,” said Puttnam, who produced the Academy Award-winning “Chariots of Fire” and “The Killing Fields.”

He is hoping to attach a public-service “advertisement” after the film’s credits roll, in which the Bradys make a straightforward appeal to viewers to support the Brady bill and tougher gun control laws in general. Already, a paragraph stating that the “persistence” of the National Rifle Assn. is preventing Congress’ vote on the Brady bill is scheduled to appear on a black background at the end of the movie.

NRA lobbyist director Wayne LaPierre said that the Brady bill will solve little, since it does not require or give enough time for a police check on a purchaser’s possible criminal background.

The gun issue is not only volatile on Capitol Hill, but also in Hollywood. Robert Cooper, a senior vice president at HBO, admitted that the company is “taking a risk” in making “The James Brady Story,” but added that the commercial networks’ disinterest in the subject matter gives his company a niche in the market.

About two years ago, in the project’s early stages, Brady and Puttnam met with Reagan in the Oval Office to discuss it.

“He was really keen we were doing the movie,” Puttnam recalled.

Whether the former President will provide an introduction to the movie remains uncertain, however.

“Having Reagan be Reagan . . . would become the story in itself. It would be a story on the fact that Reagan turns actor again,” Brady observed at the press conference here, his eyebrows raised and a smile playing across his lips.

Brady is obviously in his element when speaking with the news media. He often interrupted his wife and Bridges to interject a well-timed quip. His gaze frequently rested on Bridges, who, after two hours of makeup, mirrors the round face and thin hair of “the Bear”--Brady’s nickname.

James Brady is vice president of the National Organization on Disability, a private organization promoting the needs of some 37 million disabled citizens, and he insists that his work is there, while Sarah Brady’s is with Gun Control Inc. But since she joined the Washington-based organization five years ago, they have traveled coast-to-coast doing their “dog-and-pony show,” as Jim Brady calls it, trying to raise support for the Brady bill.

Though Brady’s speech is slow and groggy, his jokes are sharp and quick.

When a reporter asked if he was going to watch the re-creation of the assassination attempt, he replied dryly, “I already lived through that once.” And to another: “I was there . . . I’d just as soon skip it.”